A Suneetha

The list of sexual harassers in academia and progressive politics is an event born out of the demands for equality in the increasingly diverse Indian universities. The proliferation of new media has created new pathways of becoming political for young students and enabled their battles against cultural elitism and misogyny. There is need for a fresh debate on harassment, discrimination, and consent.

This paper discusses the model nikahnama or equitable marriage contract and the ensuing debate around it. Created to bring about uniformity in procedures for Muslim marriages, the aim of the model nikahnama is to address the issue of Muslim women's entitlement within marriage, minimise disputes and facilitate their settlement. The paper locates a detailed exploration of the nikahnama initiative within the broader and historically shifting context of the debate on Muslim marriage laws.

An essay in Nature last year, “Grand Challenges to Global Mental Health” (Vol 475, pp 27-30) announced research priorities for improving the lives of people with mental illness around the world, and called for urgent action and investment. However, many professionals, academics, and service user...

An examination of Muslim women's activism related to family dispute resolution, education and community work in Hyderabad suggests that establishing oneself as a Muslim woman activist requires one to be knowledgeable, tenacious and demonstrably committed to building the community. Based on a series of interviews and discussions with Muslim women working in different institutional set-ups over a period of two years, this study argues that we should pay more attention to their subjectivity, i e, ways in which they inhabit, attempt and change established social practices in the given conditions rather than on the oppositions or challenges to the "religion" and "state" or "feminism" that such activisms pose. Taking a close look at the activist trajectories, perspectives and work of Muslim women activists in Hyderabad, it argues that their articulation of rights and education is predicated on self-reliance which is posited as a prerequisite for the contemporary Muslim woman to inhabit the space of the Muslim community and citizenship.

The movement for a separate state of Telangana refl ects a longstanding demand for autonomy in social, economic and political matters, a call that has been denied for over half a century even as the region has continued to suffer within the larger state of Andhra Pradesh. Many myths and counter-arguments are being peddled by those wanting to retain the status quo.

Over the last two decades, the discourse on domestic violence has steadily moved into the legal/institutional domain. Originating in the debates within the women's movements on structural inequalities in the family, where women's struggles had a certain centrality, it has become a legal/governmental category. Emblematic of most feminist initiatives about women's lives in our country, this shift is beset with its own dilemmas and impasses. While naming, categorising, enumerating and measuring violence as well as efforts to make them legally recognisable are imperative to any feminist politics, they also generate their own effects. These effects, while resulting in some well-needed institutional solutions, also bring in their wake, certain conceptual rigidities. There is a need to pay attention to these effects while rethinking the familiar demands in the arena of domestic violence: foolproof laws, sensitive institutions and better awareness among women.

Considering that domestic violence emerges in a context where women are refusing to conform to given roles and seeking to change them, to what extent can legal intervention empower them in their struggles? What is of concern here is that the current perspectives focusing on violence and victimhood are not able to capture these strategic battles of women. The seemingly "natural" response of looking to law for resolutions is a problematic move - one that individualises the woman into a case and leads to a depoliticisation of the discussion of women's battles in the family.

H SRIKANTH's (EPWy April 13) rejoinder to Vimal Balasubrahmanyan (EPW, February 3) raises a host of issues related to human sexuality, right to sexual orientation, as well as civil and human rights, which need careful consideration. The attempt made here does not claim to address all the issues and aims only at contesting the various premise s on which Srikanth's article is based and outlining its implications for the democratic spirit that underlies the civil liberties movement(s) in India.

Appeal for Donations to the Corpus of Sameeksha Trust

This is an appeal to the subscribers, contributors, advertisers and well-wishers of Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), published by Sameeksha Trust, a public charitable trust registered with the office of the Charity Commissioner, Mumbai, India. EPW has completed 50 years of publication. Details here: